Build a sharing list. Be in each other’s orbit

It is finals week—December—sometime in the mid-1990s. I am between exams, standing at a computer inside “The Cave” at Calvin College. This is a coffeehouse inside “Johnny’s,” a snack shop, and as with other corners on campus, there are public computers—like payphones—for the sole purpose of checking one’s email. That’s all the machine does. A green cursor blinks, waiting for me to type in my login, clewis84, and off I go.

There will be a message from my dad—he and I correspond daily if not more then that, thanks to email—telling me about the Chicago sunrise or a bookstore visit on his lunch break. I will write him back and give him one of my observations about the morning. Maybe I’ll tell him that all the philosophy and religion profs gather in a little office-turned-coffee-corner in between classes. Or that for 50 cents, I can make a “poor man’s mocha” from the cafeteria’s coffee and hot chocolate carafes. It is creamy and delicious and keeps me in my chair at the library where I attempt to study.

There will be a message from Alison, one of my best friends at Calvin. She will have something hilarious or profound—usually a mix of both—to tell me, and I will do my best to respond in the same manner. Today, she’s telling me about a song of Sarah McLaughlin’s with lyrics that speak to her at this time of the year: “deep and dark December.” She and another friend—both of them from areas where things like snow and frostbite are the stuff of cartoons—play this song on the daily. She writes that the song is strangely soothing and motivating. Sarah is describing the winter as Alison is experiencing it, and it shows that someone else understands, and because of this, Alison is inspired to study.

I adjust my backpack, a dark green suede Jansport I’ve had since high school and start a joke: “You need boots and to stop wearing your Birks with wool socks.” And then I tell her about a poem that does the same thing as Sarah’s song does for Alison. It’s Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening.

I think of this poem and this moment every December, when the to-do lists pile higher than any blizzard, higher than any Lake Effect snowstorm could possibly produce, and I am filled with the same sort of yearning peace that showed up decades and decades ago.

But this is not so much a case to rest in poetry and song as it is a plea to be able to respond to it—to be able to layer it onto you and your life. Not because it will get you to the right answer, the right school, the right job. Not because you will respond perfectly, but because you can respond. We have all been given the ability to respond.

Recently I learned about a new computer program that is so advanced it writes college essays, high school essays, resumes, and cover letters better than any human. The author of the essay, a high school teacher, spent a sobering amount of time lamenting what this program is capable of, and in the end, questioned whether it was necessary to continue teaching how to write.

Alison and I, we were not innocent when it came to reliance on technology, both for its entertainment value and its convenience. Once during a retreat we were encouraged (read: told) to remove our watches. Remember, this was the ’90s. I’m not talking about the Apple Watch. I’m referring to a watch that tells time—big hand, little hand, not digital. The way Alison and I reacted to this request (demand, really), you’d think we were being asked to shave our heads or saw off our writing arms. How could we possible go on if we didn’t know what time it was? WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE IF WE DON’T KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?

That’s not the worst example I can give you. I’m not saying this is, but back in the ’90s, just after the T-Rex went extinct, we had these things called computer labs. They were in the basements of the dorms, and every day after dinner Alison and I went there to check our email. Alison and I were creatures of habit. We also had the gift of making small things into very big deals. I was actually better at this than Alison was, but that’s because she was pre-med, and I was still under the assumption that I would be a Luv-a-Bull, professionally. You have to be really dramatic to have a dream like that. This is all to say that  on this night, when we went to check email, it was full and Alison and I were aghast. Aghast, I say!

“We must do something!” I declared.

“And so we shall,” Alison said.

I don’t know whose idea it was, nor have I ever been more delighted in finding such an effective solution to any problem than I was on that night. We went back to our dorm room and called the lab, telling them that this was IT and everyone needed to evacuate due to critical computer maintenance. Minutes later, Alison and I walked into an empty computer lab, pulled up a chair to a monitor, and happily clickety-click-clack clicked away.

The other day Alison texted me about the book Orbiting Jupiter—a story title I can’t even write without getting tears in my eyes. I’d recommended the book to her years ago, and she’d read it and loved it, but had recently read it to one of her daughters. “Not recommended if you’re an ugly crier,” she texted.

Memories of reading the book to Hadley and Harper came back. We’d started the book a few days before the world shut down in 2020 and finished it at our dining room table one morning when the girls should’ve been walking to the bus to get to school.

I think Gary Schmidt is trying to show us how to wrestle with life—with love too—and we all needed that in 2020. We all need it now.

It is one thing to read a story silently, and consequently, individually. That is an important and vital gift. However, it is quite a different thing—and equally vital—to bear a story together, in communion with one another, which is what Alison and I have done for years. No computer program, no AI can do that. No thing (or person, for that matter) gets to tell you how to feel, how a story affects you, or why that story is significant.

That is up to you. That is your responsibility.

An Invitation

Let’s make a list for the holiday season. What books, poems, and songs, do you recommend to friends and family? Which books should we curl up with, cry over, talk to our friends about, and respond to in the unique way we can respond?

Photo by Tambako the Jaguar, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Callie Feyen.

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Callie Feyen

Callie Feyen likes Converse tennis shoes and colorful high heels, reading the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the Twilight series. Her favorite outfit has always been a well-worn pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, but she wants hoop skirts with loads of tulle to come back into style. Her favorite line from literature comes from Sharon Creech’s Absolutely Normal Chaos: “I don’t know who I am yet. I’m still waiting to find out.” Feyen has served as the At-Risk Literacy Specialist in the Ypsilanti Public Schools and is the author of Twirl: my life with stories, writing & clothes and The Teacher Diaries: Romeo and Juliet.

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