My VIP Letter

Dear Alex,

We don't know each other but someday I hope we meet. I was just graduating high school when you set up your first lemonade stand! That feels like a long time ago.

Alex, I work with a lot of kids who are sick, just like you were. Honestly, sometimes, I feel really fake. I don't really feel the pain that kids with cancer go through. I don't really feel your parents pain. I have a little girl Lily, but right now, she is warm & safe in bed...for now, you are a pretty long way from your Mommy's touch. A lot of kids I have met are now far away from their mommies & daddies & all the other people who loved them & still love them.

Some days...it all just makes me so sad.

Alex... I'm not as brave as you. It matters to me that people think I may not be so important--that I'm too small to make a difference. Sometimes when that happens I think about how you didn't see a limit in size or beginning pretty small. I think about how you have made a bigger impact that the smartest doctors, contributed more research than the most published scientists, & raised more money than the greatest fundraisers...it makes me smile.

Someone at your foundation (which has gotten HUGE by the way!!) said that ordinary people can do extraordinary things & that sometimes the answers to the hardest questions are surprisingly found in your own front yard...solutions that are simple...like a little humble bright-yellow lemonade stand stacked high with cups & ice & a little glass jar for donations & decorated with homemade drawings, & staffed by a dark-haired little girl smiling her sweet smile (that's you!!).

Alex I wrote a pretty long letter to your Mommy & Daddy & their friends last year to tell them about all the kids that come & see us in Florida. First of all, your Mommy & Daddy miss you & man-oh-man, are they keeping your dream going girl! Guess what?? They gave me some money to help kids in Florida and Alex, it has made me so happy. It has made some of our families so happy--Alex, you gave them hope again.

So thanks Alex. Sometimes I feel like there is not really a reason to keep working on this stuff. But I know you wouldn't want me to stop, or be small, or give up, so I won't. Cause you didn't & you did everything you promised & more. You were pretty young when you started all of this, but I think you somehow knew that just 'making lemonade' was pretty much the bottom line, right?

So thanks Alex. Thanks for being brave. And kind. And smart. And deceptively simple. And most of all, thanks for visiting my front yard.

I needed it.

Love,

Emily

To Alex, With Love

This year, I did something that was kind of a big deal.

I have a horrible personality combo, namely: I am very ambitious & very impatient. Something I think we can all agree not a happy marriage makes. In 2008, I took up a project. Without too much detail, I was to write a grant proposal for a decently prestigious award.

I failed.

I didn't get the award--we fell flat & more deserving folks won.

A year later, wiser & roused by my own competitiveness I was determined. For months I labored. I researched this group--chose every single word meticulously & edited, re-edited & preened until my proposal was goddamn near flawless. Months passed and then this April the moment of zen: the email that read the project has been selected & you have been awarded funds for your proposal.

Except it wasn't mine, at least not on paper. Through boring & complicated circumstances I will suffice to say that I am part of a team & I wrote this proposal under the name of my (really & truly great) boss. I thought it wouldn't matter that my personal effort would be nowhere to be found. I thought the joy would be in the triumph & it turns out I was right. And also wrong.

This Monday an enormous ceremony celebrating our victory will take place. It will be a completely VIP event. I'm not interested in lime-light--too afraid of failing front & center to like that--but I don't mind being close & there's no doubt I poured blood, sweat & tears into this project. I'll be on vacation during the ceremony so not even a hint of recognition will be cast my direction. In my morning meeting today my boss & I had a conversation about the words she will speak before accepting the award.

'Well, I think you should thank folks responsible, like the office that supported the groundwork,' I said, speaking about folks in an office that works closely with our own.

'Absolutely--I mean, first I want to thank you--you wrote the thing, though of course I can't acknowledge that publicly...'

And it hit me. One, that my ego is possibly the size of a small-ish country & that two, I felt robbed of an opportunity to celebrate something kind of big for myself. I didn't walk during my college graduation, I didn't have a big wedding...I have historically involved little fanfare in my personal 'accomplishments'...but this felt big. And I wanted to celebrate it. And I couldn't...I can't.

It hurts. I wish it didn't. But it does.

So.

I can't do anything about it, directly. But I can acknowledge me. That I did it--that I did good. So, this Monday while the 'important folks' are lining up in the Founder's Gallery nibbling on sausage balls & sipping coffee, I am going to drive to the driftwood beach near our vacation resort. I am going to be as dramatic as I please and by God, speaking to a bunch of sea turtles if I have to, I am going to give my acceptance speech. For me. I am going to put this back into the Universe where it came from & believe that somehow, it was...that it is meaningful.

Check back Monday.

Fe, Fi, Fictum.

My mother wrote a beautiful essay about a friend's passing about two years ago. It is one of her best works. She is a fiction-writer by nature. I have come to believe that fiction is usually not fiction at all, but a thinly (or I guess sometimes thickly) veiled memoir of people, places, and things dear and painful. My mother's writing is beautiful, but being her daughter, I see those people, places, things that sometimes are dear to me as well, and that are sometimes her 'dear' and my 'painful'.

She never writes about me.

And that's okay...I think I understand it. Writing, Southern writing in particular, is born of painful separations, raging fathers, long lines of passive aggressive matriarchs, wild children, Gothic homes large and small, cheap alcohol and the subsequent tidying of those memories through fictionalized redemption, revenge, and revision. I haven't left her much to re-write. Barring a brief rebellion in my mid-teens, I am a natural pleaser and survive on food, water, and the approval of others. I wanted to move away and live in a glass apartment in SoHo; join a synagogue and travel around the world.

I live in a three-bedroom with my husband and daughter, both whom I adore, in my hometown and attend the same church as my parents. I love my family and I feel lucky that my story is unfolding in this way but there are sentences...okay, maybe chapters, that have not turned out the way I imagined.

So much self-control I've tried to practice. Reading 'Little Women' and closing my eyes imaging Jo's mother explaining how with her devoted husband's help she had learned to close her lips tightly, bite back her words, and quickly leave the room. I've practiced for fifteen years and I finally think I'm getting the hang of it. No more spontaneous outpourings of words or thoughts or outrage. Look how far I've come! I thought to myself this week when confronted with some very unpleasant situations and people. Ha! I'm not exploding, I am controlling my thoughts, my emotions, my feelings...I stopped short. ...feeling? Am I? Why do I have less to say? And the little voice at the base of my brain replied, Because you're imploding.

Shit.

I read Mom's essay and it made me laugh, and cry, and resent myself (while also being relieved) that I don't really cause anything worth writing about except reproduction which, being insanely in love with my daughter aside, let's face it, didn't take a whole lot of skill or thought on my part but a lack thereof. A lapse I am grateful for everyday but nonetheless, there it is. There's the fact and my disclaimers one after the other, in case you missed the first, lest you think of me as flawed, selfish...human.

I sit here trying to tie all of these thoughts up with a neat ribbon that shines a pinprick of light but I can't find that neat little ribbon. Though I know it's buried there somewhere in the depths of my scraps and messy papers, photos and keepsakes. Scrunched at the bottom underneath a short lifetime still ongoing and changing--I'll find it or maybe, there it is.

Fiction (Latin: fictum, "created") is a branch of literature which deals, in part or in whole, with temporally contra factual events (events that are not true at the time of writing).