Steve, Thank you so much for reading this post and visiting the site. Your daughter Leila is extraordinary. I’ll never forget seeing her play “Isite” with you in Washington DC.

I found this video of Leila talking about Women Center Stage, and their support for In the Crossing.

[Women Center Stage]

Leila will perform her play, In the Crossing, about taking her Jewish husband to Lebanon just in time for the Israel 2006 bombing campaign for an extended run off-Broadway this fall, produced by an established theater group, the Culture Project. More details when I have them. [Playwright Leila Buck’s website]

Best,

Steve

P.S. I prefer email to blogs.

Elaine, Thank you so very much for weighing in. I loved reading about your high school cousins and the impact of phone calls being to expensive, and the shift into letters “pages and pages of teenage excitement and angst.”

Really appreciate reading that you see these letters were the genesis of your essay writing. Putting the threads together to see the bigger picture.

Thank you very much for writing, and for your appreciation of my post and this site! Being heard and seen is such a fundamental human need that one pre-industrial culture I learned of in school, banishes wrong-doers by not looking at or speaking to the person ever again. It is so devastating that people go off into the wilderness and die.

Here’s to the evolution that continues to happen when we tell what we know and others hear it and counter back.

When the separations were too long, we just had to talk, so we burned up the phone lines for a month, not realizing the expense. Our parents put a stop to that after the first bill arrived. We started writing letters instead, pages and pages of teenage excitement and angst. My favorite time of day was when the mail came.

It’s occurred to me recently that those letters were really the genesis of my essay writing. Pouring my heart out, and getting feedback…looking for a connection…it sounds a lot like what we’re all doing here. In fact one of those cousins called last week and we talked for hours, happily unconcerned about the cost. Some things do change for the better.

Anyway, thank you for taking me back for a moment, and thank you for reaching out to share a bit of your amazing life story. Kudos on your writing and on this beautiful site.

Janis, What a thrill to read that the writing spoke to you. High compliments you give with “luscious writing.” I aspire to that. Coming from a professor of memoir, it means all the more.

Have you written essays on your own ingrained places?

You speak of how I “tucked in” all those places. When one’s places are so dispersed that no one person can embrace them all (including myself), the only space in which to lay out one’s life is a tucked space, like gems sewn into pockets of a coat to slip past guards at a border crossing. It’s actually one of my biggest challenges – creating space in which to know my own life. We all share that challenge, don’t we, whether or not strange places were a factor.

Any place and moment we savor, whether with exotic names or plain ones, inspires our readers to treasure their moments.

What a kind note to carry with me to the new year! Thank you very much.

Hi Anora,

Just wanted to chime in about how much I enjoyed your post. It’s just such luscious writing. I love how you eloquently tucked in all the geographical and cultural descriptions to make us experience all the places in your “blood”–things like (of letters), “They arrived like water in the desert after a day of fasting with no food or drink at Ramadan. They arrived like food after a long mountain hike in Italy. They arrived like love, like being found after getting lost in the dark, or a foreign city like Athens.”

This really is travel writing (or travel memoir) at its best, igniting a desire for both the written word and the intimate experience of other places, other peoples–especially as those two things cohere. Your background is quite different from my own–that of a minister’s daughter from the small-town Midwest who hasn’t traveled much–but it does make me want to recall and celebrate my own ingrained places.

Thanks for this inspiring piece and for reminding us so clearly why we write (and why to contribute to this marvelous site.)

Jessica, So glad you’re getting caught up. Thanks so much for sharing your appreciation. Every time someone shares what they appreciate about a work, I look at it with fresh eyes and perspective. I’m glad you mention the impact of moving even if it is within the same country, and state. We don’t expect it to be as shocking if it’s in the same state.

Thank you very much!

Thank you for your writing and giving us all a place to “talk” about our experiences! XO Jess

Maryann, I can not even imagine your childhood, so much was mine different, as was your son’s. Yet I spent time in Italy too, when I was 11/12 and then 16-18 surrounded by aunts and uncles and my mother’s mother in Rome, but as a transplant, it may not have been the same.

I really appreciate your taking time from your busy life to drop a note. Thank you very much. I wouldn’t trade my life for anyone’s, but have to confess to still working on integrating and understanding the vastness of the experience. Happy holidays to you and your family Maryann.