by Sejal Shah
4. But how neat is that? That you and your husband are both Indian. That you were the only two Indians at your job. I mean it was fated! It’s just perfect because you’re both Indian. It’s perfect. South Asian? I think of that as Vietnamese and Laotian. I mean, why not say Indian? Isn’t that what you are? That’s what I meant. Indian-American. Oh. Indian American.
5. I’ve never heard of it. I’ve been to Goa and to Bombay and somewhere else—where the Taj Mahal is. I know India has so many dialects; there are like hundreds. Tamil and Gujarati are entirely different languages? Oh, OK, Gu-ja-ra-ti. It’s like different cultures? Well of course Polish and French are different languages.
6. You don’t wear rings? But my daughter’s Indian friend had a ring. It was a big diamond. How will people know you are married? Indian weddings: I love how colorful they are! Was it so colorful? Like a Bollywood movie? I love all those outfits. Did it take four days? My daughter went to an Indian wedding and it took four days.
7. If you have any extra invitations, I’d love to be invited. If you have any extra invitations, I’d love to see an Indian wedding. I’ve never been to one. I mean, they are so beautiful. I mean: I’d really like to go.
[2016]
Seven is a significant number in Hindu wedding ceremonies. Google it.
Temporary Talismans
There’s a postcard I’ve kept propped on my desk, on a bookshelf, or protected in a drawer since middle school. I don’t know what attracted me to that particular postcard from Germany. Perhaps it was that I had not yet traveled out of the country, other than to go to Canada. But it always felt more mysterious to me than that. The image even surfaced in a story I wrote several years ago called “The Girl with Two Brothers”: “We walk toward a mountain. We long for the curve in the road. We look at each other, heads leaning in. You are carrying a staff. The girl’s face is happy. I could never see your face.”
The postcard shows a pair of towheaded children embarking on a journey; they resemble my idea of Hansel and Gretel, though on a happier trek. I think I most likely found the card at one of those pop-up fairs of antiques, collectibles, and memorabilia that suburban malls used to host in their large corridors and courtyards. I loved looking at old bottles, books, and ephemera, and I bought this one card. It had been sent already. It was used, and it was perfect.
According to Christian McEwen in her thoughtful and timely book World Enough and Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down, we’ve lost something by losing our paper correspondence—letters and postcards. McEwen writes that “because of their brevity, and the play between words and image, postcards are perhaps especially potent.”
McEwen meditates on the corporeality of the postcard—as an art object, as a temporary talisman:
And the pleasure of a postcard in and of itself: a tiny icon which can be propped on a mantelpiece or a bedside table, attached with magnets to the fridge, slipped into the edge of a mirror, or pasted on the front of a journal, is a loss that no one even seems to mourn. And yet a postcard—just because it is so cheap, so light, so portable—can be astonishingly resilient and evocative. Who has not opened a book to find a battered postcard thrust between the pages? Who has not puzzled over a date, a smudgy postmark, and reread the message from so long ago, studying the ease or awkwardness of phrasing, the swirl of a signature . . .
I have three friendships that grew out of postcard correspondences. I met Wendy and Holly at an artist residency (fourteen and six years ago, respectively), and Michael at a conference eleven years ago. We were all already writers. But the four of us, individually, also had a practice of writing postcards to friends—and we all still do.
I have never lived in the same area as these friends, and three of us have moved in the ensuing years—between us, we’ve relocated in that time from or to Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Iowa, and Washington State. When a letter or postcard arrives in the mail, I would and do recognize each of their handwriting without a signature. It gives me such pleasure to know their handwriting. In general, I don’t know the handwriting of my newer friends.
Michael mentions peonies from when he lived in Syracuse. Holly writes of books and walks in her balletic, elegant script. Wendy’s letters fill the page, billowing clouds—a kind of kinetic energy—I see a sail filled—telling me of the relief she feels that the school year is over. What does it mean to take the time to write a card and procure a stamp when I can message any one of them on Facebook or text or email? It’s not that I do not email or message or text them now; I have and I do. But we still write postcards.
Postcards lend themselves in a quiet way to cultivating a new friendship or courting a new friend, which perhaps is why we began that way. But why do we continue? It’s a quality of mind I’m after or trying to describe. A postcard arises from a quiet place, before picking up the pen—I think it’s about attention and intention, although there can also be something breezy or even rushed, offhand about a postcard, at least in the time before email. Now, a postcard reads more deliberately than an email.
Postcards are incomplete, imperfect, and often say something about one’s travel or daily life—they free us from the sense of having to write something extraordinary or profound. They are a first and only draft. For me, as a writer, that’s such a relief. It’s a snapshot of a life.
I often edit emails, but in postcards, it’s okay to be free-ranging, to not get everything—or even anything—special in. All is forgiven and the stakes are low. The gesture itself takes some effort and care. It’s an unexpected bit of happiness in the mail. Sometimes a flash of watercolor or a small quote, writing what we were doing and thinking, an acknowledgement of the card just received. A picture for no reason. An email wants something from you—an answer, some information, a reply. A postcard asks for nothing. It is a gift.
I became friends with Wendy, Michael, and Holly in part through years of writing. Certainly we had a connection when we met and conversations that sparked and felt meaningful. And yet, there was something about the years of trading small messages, the effort taken in going to the post office, in picking a card, in retrieving the address. The old-fashioned practice of having a pen pal, of maintaining a correspondence, tending to a conversation that became, over the years, friendship.
The postcard I’ve kept for so many years: it’s not currently in rotation on my desk, but I safeguard it in a box with a few other talismans, art objects, muse-callers. There’s a phrase in German on the picture side of the card. Hinaus in die Ferne! According to Google Translate, it means “Out into the Distance.” In all those years, I had never bothered to look it up. I didn’t need to. The image had its own potency—it gave me words. It spoke to me as if from a dream, and I trusted it fully. To step onto the path with a sense of wonder—whether setting off to write something or on an actual journey, a pilgrimage.
The card said nothing extraordinary—or perhaps what it said was essential, only words, a message (which would now come by email or text or WhatsApp). No punctuation, a sort-of poem: “We arrived / here today / Everything is / great / Valney & Esther.”
This week, while out of town, I went to IKEA. After I gave up sticking to my list, I left the Swedish behemoth with, among other things, a pack of postcards. The illustrations are of single birds (though no blue jays)—and therefore, have nothing to do with Toronto, where I bought them. Still, I fancied the pale green background and the image of a solitary bird perched on each card. I will send them to Michael, Wendy, and Holly when I get home.
[2016]
Six Hours from Anywhere You Want to Be
Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, and the Southern Tier all hang onto the moniker “Northeast” by their fingernails. In a short story I wrote a few years ago, I describe western New York as “disturbingly close to Ohio.” New York is part of both the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic states. I thought I grew up on the East Coast. It wasn’t until I left for college that I realized my mistake. (New England lets you know they are the oldest, they are
the coast, they are the Cape.) New York: we are the only state whose borders touch both a Great Lake and the Atlantic Ocean.
I harbored this irrational aversion to Ohio—it’s one reason I never considered Oberlin College, and I think it could have been a good fit for me. Somehow, I had absorbed that you were supposed to either go east, as my father and brother had for school, or west to California, where nearly all of my extended family lives. Ohio seemed lame—even more so than Rochester. I was afraid of being midwestern. Rochester: we weren’t New York City, but at least we shared a state.
If you travel abroad, people will ask you where you live, and you will inevitably hear about how amazing New York City is. You can either nod your head in agreement or explain that you live over five hours away from that New York. And that where you live is nothing like it.
In 2004, I moved to the Midwest for a visiting assistant professorship at a small Lutheran college. Decorah is a town of eight thousand nestled in the limestone bluffs of northeast Iowa. Decorah, home to Vesterheim, the National Norwegian-American Museum and Heritage Center, and to the annual Nordic Fest, is two and a half hours from Iowa City; it’s closer to Rochester, Minnesota, than to the famed Writers’ Workshop.
I remember trying to find a brunch place open on a Sunday. I found one. Brunch wasn’t part of the larger culture there. Most everyone went to some sort of church service. No bookstore or coffee shop stayed open much past five or was open at all on a Sunday.
My friend Sarah said, “You have to have people over.” (Sarah—Michigan native, close friend from college—had lived all over the country and in Brazil and Nigeria, and then returned to the Midwest to teach at the University of Iowa.)
“I’m the new one there,” I complained.
“People can be reserved. And also,” she said (knowing my fear of cooking), “if you have a potluck, you’re going to get a lot of hot dish. That is what we call casserole. And three-bean salad. You’ll get that, too.”
I don’t actually remember what people brought, but it was a good night. Once I acclimated to the pace and weather and made friends, I fell in love with Decorah and the Upper Midwest. I’ve been back to the area to visit six times since I left.
Rochester sits a few miles from Lake Ontario and belongs to the Great Lakes ecosystem, which spans several states. During the six years I lived in New York City, I belonged to a writing group: Melissa grew up in Buffalo close to Lake Erie; Nora grew up in London, Ontario, and then lived in Toronto, which is right by Lake Ontario; Mike grew up in Indiana, eight miles from Lake Michigan; and I grew up nine miles from Lake Ontario, though we rarely went to the lake (those were years of zebra mussels, algae blooms, and closed beaches). We called ourselves the Great Lakes Writing Group. We have different sensibilities as writers, but we shared a sense of being outsiders in a particular way. Melissa said it best: she sometimes still can’t believe she got out of Buffalo—and that the fear of someday having to move back still lingers. For me, the fear was about staying—of somehow having not gotten out of your way in order to become who you are. I had to leave Rochester. It was never even a choice.
I escaped—for eighteen years—and then I moved back. My job ended, the cost of living was low, and I knew I could stay with my family for a while. My friend Brandon used to say, “Rochester: six hours from anywhere you want to be.” And we would laugh and laugh. Back then, we lived in Rochester. Then I thought about it and worried that it was true. Brandon lives in London now. Where did I want to be?
In her novel Jasmine, Bharati Mukherjee wrote, “The world is divided between those who stay and those who leave.” I first read those words over twenty years ago. Even then, I wanted to be someone who left. I did leave home and kept moving. I left, but more fundamentally I am someone who stays. I am someone who returns.
These days, I wonder who I am in this landscape, traveling streets on which I have driven or been driven, on which I have walked or biked or run, since my earliest memories. East, Highland, University, Clover, Elmwood, Winton, Monroe. My mother, father, and brother all left the countries of their birth to live their adult lives elsewhere. It feels strange to have returned to my hometown instead of venturing even farther out.
And then I remember Wendell Berry and his poem “Stay Home.” Berry left New York City to return to his native Kentucky, where he lives on a farm, and has devoted himself to writing about the land, localism, environmental issues:
I will wait here in the fields
to see how well the rain
brings on the grass.
In the labor of the fields
longer than a man’s life
I am at home. Don’t come with me.
You stay home too.
I will be standing in the woods
where the old trees
move only with the wind
and then with gravity.
In the stillness of the trees
I am at home. Don’t come with me.
You stay home too.
Last December, R and I, recently married, needed to return some registry items to Crate and Barrel. (It turns out no one needs that many glasses.) The closest store is in Toronto, three hours away; however, you can’t return items purchased in the United States to a store in another country. So we had to drive farther and in a different direction to reach the next-closest store. It was neither downstate nor in New Jersey. We drove four hours, crossing state lines to go to Cleveland. Everyone I tell this story to thinks it sounds crazy.
I was from Ohio and didn’t even know it. R’s favorite school is The Ohio State University. I find the “The” in the official name ridiculous. When we were dating, he told me about the NBA player LeBron James. James was on the news in 2014 for something or other; I shrugged and said, “Why would I care?” I don’t follow sports. It was a big deal in part because James left Miami to return to Ohio—he returned to his home state to once again play for the Cleveland Cavaliers. He came home. I said, “Oh—so I’m like the LeBron James of Rochester!” We had a good laugh.
Before we left Cleveland, we stopped at Dick’s Sporting Goods, a store I had never been to. R wanted me to pick out an Ohio State University T-shirt. My brother-in-law graduated from Ohio State, and my husband has followed osu sports ever since his brother was a student there. I went to one of those public high schools that prides itself on sending students to name-brand schools: the Ivies, Seven Sisters, Michigan, Oberlin, Wesleyan, Berkeley. I graduated from a women’s college, and the only games I’ve ever been to and cheered for are Division III women’s basketball. I have a complete disdain for and utter lack of interest in big-money men’s sports. If someone had told me in high school I would not only buy but also wear a Big 10 T-shirt, I would never have believed them.
We had such a nice time in Cleveland that we talked about going back. An easy drive, a waterfront to explore, good restaurants. Another Great Lakes city. I think we’ll return, but still—often we just want to be at home. We could drive four hours—or we could just stay home.
[2016]
No One Is Ordinary; Everyone Is Ordinary
Whenever my brother and I have talked about depression or therapy, which have both been part of my life for over half of it, he will bring up the film Ordinary People. Before I’d seen it, I wondered why he always mentioned a movie from the eighties. I knew the basic storyline: it was about a boy whose brother had died. My brother saw it for a class in high school. I watched the film for the first time a few weeks ago.
I texted him: “Was it Mrs. Lipson for Psych?”
“Critical Thinking and Writing,” my brother texted back. “Mr. Musgrave. He left. He was awesome.”
I knew Judith Guest, who had written the best-selling novel on which the film was based, only because she had also written the foreword to Natalie Goldberg’s classic book about making a writing life, Writing Down the Bones. I wanted to see Ordinary People because I was spending a few weeks in Lake Forest—the luxe, picture-perfect suburb of Chicago where the mo
vie was filmed.
At my suggestion, some of the others at Ragdale, a working retreat for writers and artists, and I watched the film together on an old-school TV (pre–flat screen) in a comfortable, dimly lit living room. Watching the film with people I had just met was an unusual experience—one that I found oddly moving. We sat and talked over wine—a screenwriter, a few novelists, an essayist, a poet, and a painter—about the setting, characterization, plot, pacing, and deliberate, effective use of music. We even talked about our own siblings.
I would not have watched Ordinary People at home with my husband because it is about the trauma a family endures after the sudden death of a son and beloved older brother—a trauma that my husband’s family experienced years before I met them.
To watch the film was occasionally uncomfortable. The camera shots are long. There are pauses. Timothy Hutton’s pained looks, Mary Tyler Moore’s tightness and control in gesture and facial expressions, Donald Sutherland’s genial helplessness. I did love seeing the world of 1980 again on the small screen: the preppy Fair Isle crewneck sweaters sported by Elizabeth McGovern and the other high school girls.
It had been years since I had watched a movie with friends on a couch in a living room. Ordinary People gripped me—Mary Tyler Moore’s WASP coldness, her inability to connect to her surviving son; the son’s stint in a psychiatric hospital and his attempts to articulate his pain. Everyone stumbling around what can’t be said. Timothy Hutton as Conrad Jarrett shivering in swim practice, folding his arms across his thin chest; Mary Tyler Moore straightening something on a table so that it is just so; Donald Sutherland running and then stumbling along the shore of Lake Michigan. Judd Hirsch as the Jewish psychiatrist Conrad sees—who is kind, who is tough, who helps Conrad to connect.
