January 4, 2010
Monday

“Lord, what happiness! . . . you are alive, and have turned up. . . .  I’m mad with joy!”
           — Lara Antipova in a note to Yuri Zhivago, in Dr. Zhivago
                novel by Boris Pasternak, 1890-1960, Russian writer

I wrote about him first ten years ago. I made two more brief references, in 2001 and in 2005. Every September 24 I would write “Happy Birthday, Shawn” in my journal, and I never failed to inscribe his name in the circle of those I pray for daily. I dreamed about him the night before Bread Loaf started in 2006, and used that dream in a fiction fragment created for a class a few days later.

I knew him for two academic years. Even in the year that he was no longer a student assigned to my classroom, there was probably not a school day that went by without a brief visit or at least a nod in the hallway. Then he became a soldier, and went about his business, and for six years he wrote more or less regularly, or called, or came by when he was in the area on leave, even though he no longer had any real family connection here.

In 1999 it had been five years since I’d seen him or heard from him. The five years became ten, and then, sometime this summer, fifteen. His picture, the formal Marine Corps portrait he gave me in 1988, remained on display in my living room, a yellow ribbon stuck in the corner. He was no longer a man at war, but he was absent from my sight and, because I didn’t have a valid address or a working telephone number, beyond the reach of my ability to communicate with him. But there was never a day that I did not think of him, did not speak his name into the steam that rises from my coffee like incense, making holy the names of everyone I love.

In 2004, when I had access to some premium databases for the purpose of finding high school classmates for our reunion, I ran a search on his name. It turned up in the state I knew he’d moved to, doing the work I knew he’d trained for. His name and address were always associated with that of a woman about the same age. I copied the information into my files but didn’t do anything else, reluctant to initiate contact with this very private man who must have reasons for keeping himself aloof even from me.

One day in July, not long after I began using the Aerie and just before I went to Bread Loaf, I finished reading Any Bitter Thing, a novel by Monica Wood about a broken family relationship (an uncle who loses custody of the 9-year-old niece he has been raising since she was 2) that is restored and healed after 21 years. That night I was friended on Facebook by a girl who had been one of Lynn’s classmates in middle school and had spent a lot of time in our house. Family trouble had forced her to leave our community before she graduated. She was writing to thank us for her care of her and to re-establish a connection that was important to her.

All that reunion-ing and restoring got me worked up. On a whim, I searched Facebook, first for his name (not surprised it wasn’t there), and then the young woman’s.

And there she was. You can send notes to people on Facebook, even if you’re not officialy “friended” with them. I sent her a message just before midnight, explaining who I was and sending a link to the piece I wrote about him in 1999. She replied just after 7 a.m. “I love him, too,” she said. She knew who I was. He told her about me “a few years ago.” She would send him my message at his work e-mail. And she friended me.

His note came at 2:00. Subject Line: Contact. Message: “I’m still alive.”

“That’s it?” I replied. “After fifteen years, that’s it??? It’s enough. For now. You have, of course, opened a door. More later.” And I included the line from Dr. Zhivago.

I did send him the more later, a few links to other pieces I’ve done that I thought he might find of interest. He wrote just once to say that he has only limited Internet access at work and cannot follow the links I give, and that he does not use a computer at home. I said I understood. In September I sent him a note on his birthday. And I peeled the yellow ribbon off the picture frame.

Except for that, the old silence has resumed. But it has a softer, less sighing quality, at least for me. I know where he is, and what he is about.

What was your favorite thing that you wrote in 2009, and why? asked the Holidailies prompt of a few days ago.

In 2009 I wrote two complete short stories, 20,000 words of the novel I have been working on since 2002, and the very first work on a new novel, the project I will take to a Vermont residency in October. That’s about 50,000 words all told, the best fiction work I have ever done.

I wrote 96 essays for Markings, probably close to 100,000 words. I wrote 355 pages in my paper journal, dozens of emails and Facebook notes, responses to other people’s blogs, numerous postings to the various discussion lists I frequent.

And of all those words, all those efforts to put my voice out into this world, to say my piece and make my mark, to keep in touch with the people who mean the most to me, the one I am most glad I wrote was a note to a complete stranger, asking after someone she cares for too.

 

From the Archives
January 4, 2005 — Melanie: I seemed to be moving in slow motion. At noon I got dressed to go out to the copy shop to duplicate my letter. I chose clean clothes not from my holiday outfits because I’m tired of the sparkly stuff, put on my makeup, put in earrings, tied my shoes, and then sat down on the bed in tears. Then I crawled under the covers and put my beak under my wing for two hours, at the end of which I felt really no better. That’s when I came out of denial and acknowledged that maybe, just maybe, Melanie is here.

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