When I had already gone to bed last night, I received a photo attachment of Ann Patchett's These Precious Days, the accompanying messaging reading "I picked this up and thought of you." I discovered that essay collection while wandering the local bookstore with a few of my friends, opening up the cover to an essay called "Three Fathers," an essay that sparked my love for Ann. I rave about her writing and that particular book frequently, recommending it to my fellow-reader friend Peyton a while back. Clearly, she remembered.
Peyton and I met in a creative writing class in the spring semester of my freshman year, almost two years ago now. Our instructor had everyone write letters in response to each other's work, so each person received a pile of letters on the day of their workshop. It was my first creative writing class, so I was eager to get so much written feedback, but I had no idea what else I would get out of that pile of letters that I was handed on that day in February.
I was one of the first workshops of the semester, and I barely had a grasp on everyone's names, so matching the name on the bottom of each letter to a face proved a bit difficult. But there was one that especially stood out. At the end of the feedback, one of my classmates wrote something along the lines of "I've seen you around campus and you seem cool. I would love to get to know you better."
Peyton and I started getting lunch every week, going to coffee shops together on the weekends. We had another class together last spring and got to write each other more letters. When she was in Iceland this fall, we caught up over email. And on this day in the middle of December, she picked up Ann Patchett's work and thought of me.
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