In Praise of Snail Mail

Through twenty-three years and five moves across two states, I’ve kept a manila file folder containing the first acceptance letter I ever received. The letter is typed on cream-colored stationery, glossy and substantial, and is embossed with the letterhead of the magazine that accepted that long-ago first story. Looking at it now, I still remember the sense of hope I felt standing there in the dusty foyer of the rowhouse apartment where I lived in Philadelphia. I remember thinking the envelope was too fat to be a letter of acceptance, but too slim to be the story I’d sent them, only to be returned to me now with regrets.

The other day I uploaded five poems into an online submission manager and hit “Submit.” Seconds later I received a form e-mail from the journal thanking me for my submission. It cost me nothing but a moment of my time and spared me a slog to the post office on a crummy day, the way I’d done so long ago in Philadelphia. I remember how I’d hiked that short story down to the post office not far from City Hall and kissed the clasp envelope before handing it to the amused clerk. I was a graduate student at the time, living on student loans and a part-time job as a proofreader; the money that I spent on postage to send that story and others out into the world would have been considerable—part of the dues I thought I needed to pay become a writer.

Recently, a friend shared a story on his blog about a journal that accepted four of his poems nearly two years ago, only to send him an e-mail months later rejecting those same four poems. After many back and forth e-mails, the editor (the same one who’d accepted the poems) attributed the rejection to “budget cuts.” And so my friend did what most poets do when they receive rejection: Moved on and resubmitted those poems to other magazines. Several of the poems were subsequently accepted, suggesting a happily-ever-after ending –-until recently, when he received a print copy of the journal that had rejected him containing (you guessed it) the four poems the magazine had declined.

As writers we’re well advised not to take rejection personally, to treat it not as an event—as Carolyn See writes—but as a process. To be sure, e-mailed rejections can be easily dismissed as blips, the briefest of interruptions on an otherwise okay day. But acceptance – whether the first or the hundred and first – should be an event, a worthy-of-fireworks ceremony marking the final mile in a creative journey that started with a handful of words whispering this way.  And a letter dropped through a mail slot or tucked into a box next to the front door affirms this in a way that an e-mail is simply unable to.

The day I received that first letter of acceptance I called all of my friends. I toasted myself with a bottle of beer and when I finally fell asleep, the letter was next to me on the pillow.

It smelled like hope. It still does. 

An Ode to East Avenue Wegmans

An Ode to East Avenue Wegmans

Really, can you grieve a building? Can you miss a building the way you would a dead parent or a beloved pet? Can you grieve a building that was in no way distinguished architecturally or historical or remarkable, a building that was in fact nothing more than a pile of nondescript beige bricks? A building with dingy linoleum floors, narrow aisles and a vegetable section that was all but impossible to negotiate on Sunday morning.

The answer to each question is yes, yes, yes and yes.

This morning at 7 a.m., to the delight of a thousand people—a couple dozen of those who’d been waiting in line for twenty-four hours—the new East Avenue Wegmans opened. It’s not the old building, to be sure, whose old footprint is now forever underneath the lot I parked in this morning. It’s big and clean and I wager to say that no one will go missing in the vast room of veggies and fruits. But underneath the shine is the same old East Avenue Wegmans—the familiar faces of employees who, for nearly twenty-two years, have seemed like friends.

So much of my history here in Rochester is tied to that store. Wegmans is where I went the Tuesday afternoon in 1999 when my mother died, to buy cat food and litter before leaving for the week. When the clerk at the checkout counter asked me if I’d found everything I was looking for, I told her my mother died. She was the first person I’d spoken to and my voice sounded dusty and unused. “I’m so sorry,” she said, and leaned around the counter to give me a hug.

On September 11, 2001, when I couldn’t bear to see another replay of those planes crashing into the World Trade Center, I turned off my television and drove to Wegmans. The aisles were full of people who walked as if they were fragile, breakable, and yet it was as quiet as a church. I suspected they, like me, didn’t need much in the way of groceries, only to understand that the world would somehow go on.

When my Wegmans closed in late February, I missed it terribly. I deliberately avoided driving by that area. I didn’t want to see the line of bulldozers, the shattered glass and the eventual pile of bricks of the old store. It was late winter, and everything is harder here in late winter.

Just before seven this morning, minutes before the new store was about to open its doors, a longtime employee—apron in hand—waved as she walked past the line. There were shouts of “Karen! There’s Karen! Yay, Karen!” and several people applauded as if the sidewalk were suddenly a red carpet.

You just had to be there.