January 13, 2026

dear Rene´

You popped into my mind this morning. So maybe whatever is happening on your end of the map has made its particle way across the many miles between us, and has touched down here on this bright, not-too-cold winter day. Right now, Rene´, I’m looking at a tree whose name I somehow haven’t learned in the past five years of seeing it out this same window. It’s the only green thing in my view at the moment, save the skimpy pine on the footpath between our house and the neighbors behind us. Rene´, I think you’d appreciate that Amy and I assembled a little fairy home there, at the edge of the woods, with tiny furniture, and that we put little notes and gifts in there now and then for our neighbors’ kids to find. We pretend we’re a retired gnome couple traveling the globe, and we write to them about our adventures abroad. There’s always some reason we say we haven’t met the kids yet—we had an early plane to catch, or decided to extend our trip to Paris or the Himalayas, or got the last two spots for a hang-gliding retreat we’d been dreaming about for years. One day, I know, the kids will catch on, or else stop being interested in the letters from old people who have never properly introduced themselves. But for now, they’re sticking to the story, sometimes writing some notes back to the gnomes and telling of their adventures. If we all lived closer to you, Rene´, I’d take them to meet your cows, spend some time in those fields by your house. Maybe we’d luck out and you and Wayne would be performing somewhere close. Or if the weather was bad, we’d all chill out in your studio and listen to you reading us your poetry. Rene´, when I type your name out, I always take a small delight in adding that little accent after the “e,” just like how you sign your emails. Something about that accent adds a beat of time with you, makes me think of what makes us who we are. That part of us glowing with its own particular brand of sunlight. It can be hard, these days, to tap into that, to reach for that spark and let it brighten our path. So much to react to, or protect ourselves from, worry about. It takes so much energy just to put our heads down and get on with the business of the day. And yet, what I’m thinking about this morning is that accent. Your accent. And what my version of that accent is, or might be. Because, Rene´, I don’t want to imagine a world where we’re just putting our heads down. Where we turn away from hard work. And my goodness, you’re doing the hard work in spades. You’re showing me what not turning away looks like. What it demands. What it might cost. But I’m learning that this is where the spark is, the accent, the sunlight. That place in the middle of the maelstrom that insists on being heard, on being counted. That refuses anything but aliveness.