10. The question at the onset is always: What can the writer give the reader that they have not already received elsewhere? There are all those other books that have said all the things. And even if a writer manages to push out a magnum opus, you know what can happen? A reader may get in bed, flip open said magnum opus, and use a few sentences as a handy exit ramp out of their day, letting the words pile up on their eyelids (word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word) until that reader succumbs to their weight and slips into sleep.
11. I like writing in the afternoon. The morning is the warm-up period. I can sometimes trick myself into a few sentences by standing at the counter eating a yogurt next to my laptop, which just happens to be open. But for the real thing, I need to sit down, feel the day’s edges rub up against me, touch the afternoon with my left hand and impending evening with my right.
12. Why do I write? Because I can’t not. There are other reasons (recognition, money, mortality, job duty), but they are mere quarter notes on the staff, while can’t not is the ever-present, fluttering, harmonious trill:
can’t not can’t not can’t not can’t not
can’t not can’t not can’t not can’t not
I (want to) believe that if I were cut off from the outside world and confined, indefinitely, to a small white room, I would still write. If, in that bare box of a room (I can’t stand it—in my mind I just added a skylight to the pretend room), I was given the choice of either a bed or writing instruments, I’d be sleeping for the rest of my days on a cold floor with a pillow made of crumpled paper.
FINAL REVIEW
I. I really tried to make a thoughtful exit.
a. Great seeing you guys!
b. I’ll for sure text you the name of that shoe website!
c. Oh right, see you at that thing next week!
d. Once outside on the sidewalk I realize
i. I forgot my scarf
ii. I left it on the table
e. Now I have to dash back into the gathering
i. and do that thing where you try to act simultaneously gracious
ii. and invisible.
II. I purchased a massive box of Q-tips.
a. Maybe there were a thousand Q-tips in there
i. Maybe ten million
ii. I have no idea
b. Whatever the number, it was a lot, a whole lot, somewhere between excessive and insane
c. When I put the box away, I thought, Well, one thing’s for sure: I will never, ever have to buy Q-tips again
d. I could imagine using one or two a day and then maybe eventually—after twenty years?—getting to the point where I’d make a noticeable dent in the tightly packed layers
e. But I could not conceive of a time when there would be just a couple left . . . two lone, skinny stragglers flopping around the bottom
f. But one day, while everyone else was going about their business, I reached in and pulled out the very last Q-tip
g. The box, as it turns out, was not endless.
III. I am looking at that photo of the three of us.
a. Just a few hours after delivery
i. we are so ruddy-skinned
ii. right out of the gate
iii. blank slates
b. Jason is holding the baby
c. Our expressions seem to say
i. Here he is!
ii. Our first baby!
iii. The world’s first baby!
iv. All the other babies who exist are rumors, vague versions of a baby!
v. Ours is the only real baby!
d. This photo was taken two decades ago
i. This was when I still had to look up the pediatrician’s phone number
ii. This was when, filling out forms, I’d catch myself writing Ann, my own mom’s name, in the space for mother.
IV. I’d like to be deliberate about what you might associate me with.
a. Some already associate me with a yellow umbrella
i. That’s fine by me
ii. I like that
b. I’m going to toss out another everyday item that also feels good: a doorknob
c. Doorknob =
i. small
ii. give me your hand
iii. come on in.
V. You just can’t compete with the way green treetops look against a blue sky.
To share a photo of green treetops against a blue sky, text Green blue.
You will then be prompted to text your photo.
All photos will appear at the website’s Green/Blue gallery.
VI. I set up a wish-making portal online.
a. An image of a dandelion sits next to the wish-making box
b. When the wisher clicks submit, the dandelion blows
c. The wishes arrive anonymously
d. Thousands of wishes have been made
e. Four categories of wishes are tied for most common
i. money
ii. happiness
iii. health
iv. love
f. A surprising number of people wish for good weather
i. Two people wished for rain
g. A good amount of wishes are about yearning to travel
i. to Africa
ii. to Disneyland
iii. to New York
iv. to Italy
v. to the moon
h. One person wished to be a mermaid
i. Close your eyes and think about the wishes
i. Maybe it will help someone’s wish come true.
FIG. 1 What people wish for
VII. At the baggage claim I see the man and woman from my row.
a. My people! These are my people!
b. They are now familiar to me
c. We spent three hours elbow-to-elbow
d. We passed plastic cups of ice water and mini bags of pretzels over to one another
e. I know what they look like asleep
f. Then we hoist our bags off the conveyor belt, wheel away in scattered directions
i. never to see each other again.
VIII. Sometimes I like to change up my response when Jason says I love you.
a. Thank you, I’ll say
b. Or: Good to know
c. Or: Phew!
d. But usually I say I love you back.
IX. I am watching Uncle Henry as he walks away after dinner.
a. His slow, gentlemanly shuffle along the snowy sidewalk
b. He looks so dapper
i. camel hair dress coat
ii. trilby hat on his head
iii. wife of sixty years on his arm
c. Any moment now he will probably call back with his signature send-off
d. Yes, there it is
i. Bye, Ames!
e. He was such a good sweet man
f. His granddaughter is an elementary school teacher and for years he volunteered in her classroom
i. The children adored him
ii. They called him Grampy
iii. When reading stories or sharing tales of his boyhood, he often wept
g. When he died, those children all came to pay their respects
h. Everyone who knew him loved him
i. When my aunt broke the news to their mail carrier she had to bring him inside to sit down
i. He could not be consoled.
X. I came across Paris’s homework on the kitchen counter.
a. It was a translation practice sheet
b. Ten simple words
c. It was her sweet, diligent handwriting that initially caught my eye
i. I’ve kept the piece of paper on my desk for years now
d. Something about these exact words in this exact order
i. like an accidental mantra
ii. like a sub
lime, no-frills distillation of every single book, every single philosophy, every single everything
iii. like it begs to be recited over and over and over again.
To hear this recited by my daughter all these years later, text Mantra.
XI. In the alley, there is a bright pink flower peeking out through the asphalt.
a. It looks like futility
b. It looks like hope.
END NOTES
For the musical accompaniment to these last pages, text End notes.
If you were happy before you opened this book, you are probably still happy. If you were medium-fine before, you are probably still generally, existentially a-ok. In both cases, I hope my thoughts have served as a handy amplifier to your own soulful interior humming and strumming. However, if you were sad or troubled before, and that feeling has not eased at all, I am sorry—I wish that this had made everything all right. Tell me what I can do and help me to understand, because I’m guessing here, and I’m ready, and we don’t have much time.
Long ago I was given the advice that it is better to say your good-byes early than to be the last to leave. I was in my late teens at the time, and I remember how counterintuitive those two sensible cents felt to me. Why would I want to leave when the party’s still so fun? I haven’t even talked to ____ yet! Overstaying one’s welcome was a more nuanced, grown-up, social-cue concept to grow into, an acquired taste. But I am not sure that age and perspective have nudged me much. If anything, my pendulum is even further out of whack, dangling all the way on the side of leave-kicking-and-screaming. Most holidays and family gatherings conclude the same way: with Jason catching my eye and making a let’s-wrap-it-up circle in the air with his index finger, followed by him and the kids waiting for me in the car as I try to extricate myself from the night, to come to terms with it being over, to cram in a few more huggy good-byes while the car headlights glare at me through my folks’ front window. And by the way, I smile, I do not grimace, thinking about the husband and wife who are always the last to shuffle away from our gatherings. This couple may halfheartedly rev up when they see others departing, but then they just end up lingering with their coats on, wrapped leftovers in hand, sharing just one more great story.
Bye. I love you. Thank you. In a last-call, sincere, farewell moment, those are the six words that would fall out of my mouth. I don’t think I could even suppress it. In fact, in certain situations, I’d probably repeat it on a loop, like an incantation, as if chanting byeIloveyouthankyou byeIloveyouthankyou byeIloveyouthankyou hard and focused enough might actually do the trick of penetrating the constricting haze of language, transmitting (finally!) exact meaning and intent. If, for example, I picture myself as someone immigrating to 1920s America, frantically waving good-bye to my shtetl parents from the deck of an ocean liner as it pushes back from the harbor, I’m shouting (over the ship’s loud horn), Bye, Mama! Bye, Papa! I love you! Thank you! Bye! Thank you! I love you! If I were a rock star, my post-encore, acronym refrain of choice: BILYTY! BILYTY! If I were on my death bed, my family surrounding me, my bony hands holding theirs, I’m shout-whispering, Bye, guys! I love you so much! Thank you! I love you forever! Bye. I love you. Thank you.
I was here, you see. I was.1
I was so big, bigger every day . . .
And there was a house and a school.
And a car and a job and a dog!
And everything was rush-rush quick,
and hard, so hard.
I wonder. I wonder what was so . . . hard?2
We could see our entire world.
And our entire world, at that moment,
was green and golden and perfect.3
1 Ending of Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life
2 Ending of Elsewhere, Gabrielle Zevin
3 Ending of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
Guests coming soon.
And still no flowers on table.
I must go into the garden.
I want to go far away.
So many places I never saw.
This is a strange land.
Sun never stops shining.
I am so tired.
I want to sleep but light in my eyes.
Write me.
I want letters waiting.4
4 Ending of A Woman of Independent Means, Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
I would like it very much if you thought of me
as a mouse telling you a story, this story,
with the whole of my heart
whispering it in your ear in order to
save myself from the darkness,
and to save you from the darkness too.5
5 Ending of The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
Good-by. Good-by, world.
Good-by to clocks ticking . . .
And food and coffee.
And new-ironed dresses and hot baths . . .
and sleeping and waking up.
Oh, earth,
you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.6
She came to the door to see me out
and kissed me on both cheeks.7
We must keep looking.
I’ll be off now.8
6 Ending of Our Town, Thornton Wilder
7 Ending of The Razor’s Edge, W. Somerset Maugham
8 Ending of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
Bye.
I love you.
Thank you.9
9 Ending of Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal
* Hadley, Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, lost all his early manuscripts (both the originals and carbon copies) on a train to Paris. She felt guilty about this for the rest of her life.
* Short, Collective Biography was originally launched as a collaboration between conceptual artist Lenka Clayton and myself at TEDActive 2015.
← September 16th is the day of the year when the most humans utter their very first word
← Poetry
← Fishing
← A Japanese term (pronounced mo-noh noh ah-WAH-ray) meaning an awareness of the impermanence of all things and a wistful, gentle sadness at their passing
← 94% chance I touched up the peeking-out toes with nail polish right after putting on aforementioned sandals and just before seeing you
← Falling in love
← Text
← Oh shit
←
← Rosenthal House Special Pea Dip
← That moment on the plane
← Words I kept trying to find a home for in this book
← Love
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Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal Page 6