Slice of Life Challenge – March 24 – Postcards and Praises

I arrived home today and discovered, there in my mailbox, a postcard from Glenda Funk. She’d recently traveled to Thailand and sent me a card.

“Add Thailand to your bucket list,” she urged. She knows I enjoy visiting new places.

Glenda is my travel guru. If I’m going on a trip, I’m asking Glenda about what to do in that corner of the world. In fact, she’s shared some travel notes with me over the past few weeks. Our plans to go to Glacier National Park will be delayed for a year since one of the main tours is sold out. So instead, we’re planning to drive the eastern half of Route 66 and eat in some retro diners with 5,000 calorie cheeseburgers and 10,000 calorie milkshakes and stay in some iconic motels (yes, the kinds that are dated with actual bedspreads and have doors that open to the outside world and might have a ring in the tub and stain or two on the rug, and pillows that might only have half their stuffing left but it’s okay because we probably won’t get much sleep anyway with that neon sign humming and illuminating the entire room through the thin curtains in the window).

Glenda had a couple of must see suggestions for me. Please share yours, too. I love comparing travel notes – – (would you believe I just discovered that Pandora has a Route 66 station?? )

I was strolling through a small town recently looking for some next-town-over postcards when I saw a display of unusual ones. They weren’t the landmark scenes I expected for the Walking Dead town I was in, but rather obscure shots of views of the town from unexpected angles with different slants of light. One was taken from the ground, looking up from underneath the water tower with a glint of sun’s rays angling down like a stairway to Heaven. Another appeared to be taken from the top of a hedge near a fence by a livestock feeding trough on someone’s backyard farm.

“I just updated those,” I heard a female voice from behind the counter explain.

“You made these?” I asked of the tall woman, about my age, peering up over her marbled reading glasses on a chain.

She nodded. “I did. I try to change them up every few months to show there is more to this town than our visitors realize. I take the shots and send them off for publication through VistaPrint.”

I complimented her photography, thanked her for sharing her ideas, and selected several cards to purchase.

This all got me thinking about the ways we travel and what we see – – and, more important, all that we don’t see. It led to my thinking about the people whose experiences I value so much – travel gurus and writing community members who give me glimpses into the world from angles I would never otherwise see – those places my own feet may never pass. For today, it also led me to a post from a member who says she almost didn’t write this month because of her grief over the loss of a loved one – – but she courageously took a bold step and climbed over her sadness and honest fears to post. I thought of my own mother’s death and how my writing community was my lifesaver. Those days, my friends, are the longest journeys we’ll ever take – – the inward ones. The kinds of journeys for which there are no postcards.

There has never been a more important time to celebrate the love of a writing community than today ~ to ring the bells and blow the airhorns and fire up the music and dance in the streets for all we have in our fellow writers. We share recipes and book reviews. We gather ideas. We explore hobbies. We take vicarious adventures. We encourage each other and offer our shared experiences, sometimes opening up in ways we would never do with our in-person friends and family. We even seek advice and suggestions. We share health concerns, herbal treatments, and children’s milestones. We pen lines of poetry, we relive childhood, we share the most scenic camping spots and the quaintest coffee shops. We reminisce (and even resurrect moments with the dearly departed). We look out windows, watch snow melt and rain fall and sun shine and flowers bloom. We laugh and cry about stuff.

And we step out into the light of day knowing that we are choosing to connect with others as we channel life.

I’m celebrating this community – and you – today. It’s a day to say thank you, two dozen days into the writing challenge.