I have a new hero.

The first time I drove past him, it was 11:00 on a brutal August morning in Georgia. The heat and humidity had already exceeded the Dangerous for Old People and Sensitive Writers level—it felt like walking around the inside of a dragon’s mouth, being steam-boiled alive. This time of year, in deliberate over-compensation, I crank the AC in my minivan so high that it’s like the North Pole on wheels.

As my children and I shivered in our van at a busy intersection, waiting for the light to change, I spotted him holding court on the sidewalk in front of a decaying strip mall. I don’t know his name, but I’ll always think of him as the We Buy Gold Guy. He was a stocky white kid, maybe in his early twenties; his baseball cap was cocked at a jaunty sideways tilt, and he held a gaudy gold sign in the shape of an arrow. Large black letters screamed, “We Buy Gold!”

Sign-holders like this guy have been, for me, one of the most memorable—well, signs—of the recent recession. I’ve seen dozens of people holding signs like this one during the past few years: Close-Out Sale! Debt Solutions! $5 Pizza! I always feel a jolt of sympathy for the poor sign-holders. How miserable they look, standing on the side of the road for hours, braving the heat, the cold, the rain—surely these people have fantastic talents, big dreams for their futures—and yet a miserable job market has forced them to spend hours of life waving signs at passing drivers, who are too busy yakking on cell phones to bother sparing them a glance. Some of the sign-holders stand there, enthusiastic as dead-eyed zombies; a few give their signs a weary wiggle every so often; all are clearly counting the minutes until their sentence is complete.

But the We Buy Gold Guy was different. The dude was dancing—not just pumping the sign up and down halfheartedly, like, “Hey, they’re paying me minimum wage to shake this sign and grow skin cancer out here”—but seriously jamming, like he was out to win “Dancing with the Stars.” We’re talking Michael Jackson smoothness, and awesome behind-the-back tricks, spinning and tossing his sign like a baton-twirler in a parade, all to the beat of the old-school boom box sitting at his feet. My jaw dropped open in awe, not just in envy of his rhythmic prowess, but in amazement at his pure enthusiasm, his unbridled joie de vivre. I couldn’t help but grin. (For more on my minivan socializing habits, see The Biker Wave.)

I smiled and chuckled the rest of the way home.

I drove by him again a few days later—the heat was even worse, and yet the We Buy Gold Guy was still out there, break dancing to his own music as the world drove past. Nobody clapped, nobody honked, nobody tossed coins in a hat at his feet. He danced for the sheer joy of it, because hey—if you have to hold a stupid sign on the side of the road, you might as well do it right.

I want to be like that guy. Really, I do. I don’t care what the world throws at me—minimum wage job, spine-melting heat, stinky exhaust fumes—I only get one life, only so many summers, falls, winters, springs, and I don’t want to waste a single minute. I want to live with abandon, dance my rhythm-less heart out no matter who’s watching, make my own party wherever I go. We only get one shot—we might as well dance.

In honor of Father’s Day, with more love than words can hold…

Princess
by Elizabeth Laing Thompson

Twirling in a clumsy pirouette,
a carousel of pink lace, purple satin, spangled frills,
she whirls to a breathless stop,
her pixie face radiating self-delight.
Wiggling fingers stretched wide to embrace the world,
her cockeyed crown slips down over one twinkling eye.
Giggling, she sing-songs,
“Daddy, am I your beautiful princess now?”
He nods, stifling laughter, and pulls the pile of princess jumble into his strong arms.
He nuzzles her baby-fine hair, inhaling the maple syrup smell of innocence.
“Always.”

A radiance of white, she squeezes his hand
for one last walk, safe under his wing—
just yesterday, he could balance her tiny body in his palm.
Her enraptured gaze is all for another;
his remembering eyes are all for her.
“Her mother and I,” he whispers, so the crowd can hardly hear.
Bending down, he gives one final kiss on her cheek,
flushed warm with dreams of the life to come.
She smiles, and breathes—he wonders if she even
spoke aloud—
“Am I your beautiful princess now?”
His words brush light against her ear—
“Always.”

He opens the door,
chaos tumbles in—
a litter of grandchild puppies, tripping and squealing, havoc-wreaking.
Over the melee, her arms filled with the newest chubby bundle,
she detaches greedy fingers tangled in her hair, gently shakes off an ankle-grabber;
with a happy-harried laugh and a rueful glance down at her wrinkled shirt,
she opens her mouth to say hello—
but a dancing blur of ribbons and skirts slams into his knee.
Throwing a blanket cape across her shoulders, the little tot laughs,
“Granddaddy, am I your beautiful princess now?”
Throat closing, he rests a palm on her bobbing curls
And winks up at her glassy-eyed mother—
“Always.”

Moments. Life is a series of moments—thousands, millions of them, strung together in dizzying, relentless procession. And sometimes they rear-end each other, piling up in a tangled, mangled mess of memory so we don’t know when one ends and another begins, and we risk losing forever the ones that get pancaked in-between.

The soccer game is well underway when I arrive—yes, against my will, I am a soccer mom, this is all my husband’s doing—so I thread my way across a field of chaotic toddler soccer matches, heading toward my daughter’s team at the far end. I chuckle at all the packs of miniature people stumbling after soccer balls nearly as big as they are, entire teams falling on top of each other in wiggling piles, like litters of clumsy puppies.

My family is easy to find: my broad-shouldered husband, towering over everyone else in his bright red shirt; my long-legged oldest daughter, racing, gazelle-like, down the field in her lavender jersey; and my other two children, giggling on the sidelines, balancing fluorescent orange cones on their heads. I mingle my sigh with a laugh: My children the coneheads.

My two-year-old’s cone topples to the ground, and she glances up. Spotting me from yards away, her big brown eyes sparkle in that crinkly way she inherited from my grandmother. “Mommy!” she squeals, drawing out the word with the shameless exuberance only a toddler dares embrace. And she is off, scampering toward me on stumpy legs—cherubic cheeks flushed pink with play; curls, damp with baby-girl sweat, bouncing around her chin; chubby, grubby hands reaching for me—and joy, transcendent delight, lighting her face. My heart sprints ahead of me to hug her—and deep inside, I pray, “Please oh please let me remember this moment.” And even as I rush toward her, I desperately try to brand the memory—the unbridled affection in her eyes, the clumsy cadence of her run, the lilt in her little-girl voice, the squeeze of tiny arms around my knees, the swell of my own heart—somewhere deep in my soul, forever.

And then it’s a spring evening—not even 7:30—and my children, exhausted from a day spent in the wholehearted pursuit of childhood, are already snoozing. My husband calls me outside to show off his handiwork with the sprinklers—he’s spent days lying on his stomach with his arm shoved, shoulder-deep, into the red Georgia clay—and I follow him into our front yard. He’s happy with his accomplishment, and his contentment is contagious. I look around. The mosquitoes and humidity, those plagues of Southern summers, have yet to arrive this year. The air is cozy, friendly—a warm breath brushing our cheeks with hints of honeysuckle and magnolia. And as my husband gets distracted— fiddling again, always fiddling—I look up at the sky: the blue is fading, diluting, more white now than blue; already I can see the pale half-moon, making an early appearance.

While my husband tinkers, I plop down onto the prickly grass, breathing the clean air, peering up at my children’s darkened bedroom window. I smile to myself. This is nice, I think. I’m happy. A flicker of fear for the unknown future darkens my thoughts, just for a heartbeat. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, I tell myself, reining in my imagination, but right now, in this five minutes, life is good. All is right in our little world. It doesn’t get any better than this. I swirl the feeling around inside myself—tasting it, savoring it, imprinting it into my heart, storing its essence for a time when I may need to recall the memory of serenity.

Sure enough, hours later, my daughter sleepwalks and mistakes the carpet for the toilet. Peaceful moment gone. New moment—gross moment—begun. But all night long—all week long—my mind flits back to those five twilight minutes spent basking on my front lawn, an arm’s reach from the man I love.

Days later, my oldest child “graduates” from preschool. Sure, it’s all a bit comical—preschoolers, decked out in scarlet caps and gowns, “Pomp and Circumstance” lending undue solemnity as they march down the aisle—but still, I cry. (Of course I cry. Always, I cry.) The end of innocence, it feels like. Like she’s walking away from her baby-girl years for good, off for the big bad world of kindergarten. And it’s a bittersweet foretaste of the real graduation to come, thirteen blink-of-an-eye years from now—the one when I finally lose her to the real world. But today, my daughter—so often reserved and shy in groups of people—today, she glows. Her bronze cheeks radiate a rosy pride, her black eyes dance, and her giddy, giggling grin sets my heart soaring. She has never been more beautiful.

By the time the ceremony ends, I’ve already forgotten the songs she sang, but I know I’ll never forget the song in my heart and the way that she smiled, marching down that aisle, taking my breath away.

Moments. Most of us will stop to acknowledge life’s milestones, the scrapbook-worthy events, but so often it’s the little things that mean the most—a sunbeam smile from a child, a well-timed finger-brush from the one we love, a laugh-til-you-cry phone call from an old friend. Add up these countless, seemingly insignificant memories, and you’ve got a life. A life worth living. A life worth remembering. I only hope we’re all aware enough to recognize those little moments when they come—not just the happy ones, but the heartbreaking ones, too—to put life on pause, just for a beat; take a snapshot in our heart, bottle a feeling in our soul; and just live, and love, one moment at a time.

It was a simple gesture, really. The motorcycle rider, driving toward my minivan on a two-lane road, flicked his right wrist casually out to the side, his fingers pointing toward the pavement. I watched for him to turn, thinking he was making a turn signal… but then he kept going past me, disappearing in my rearview mirror. It took me a minute before I realized what he was doing: he was waving to the motorcycle rider in front of me.

And then I remembered my dad—the Harley-riding preacher—once telling me about biker etiquette. You always give other bikers the little “Hey fellow cool biker dude, what’s up” wave. Always. And they give it to you. Once you have a motorcycle, you’re in the club, you get the wave. Everywhere you go, from every biker you pass.

I already have a natural fondness for bikers, because of my dad and Rage Waters (Crystal’s Harley-riding-rock-star dad in The Thirteenth Summer), but now I have yet another reason to love all the hairy, tattooed, bike-riding rebels of the world. I find their culture of waving both fascinating and endearing. Let’s be honest: Bikers—particularly Harley-riding ones, with their head-to-toe black leather and their ZZ Top beards—seem like the least likely segment of the population to engage in friendly, borderline cheesy behaviors like waving. Spitting, maybe; rude gestures with their middle fingers, probably—but waving, not so much. And so, bizarre as it may sound, this whole waving-bikers concept warms my heart and—dare I indulge in a bit of hyper-sentimentality?—gives me hope for mankind.

We all want to feel connected, to belong… and bike riders have found a small but meaningful way to find brotherhood with their fellow dudes—a method that has eluded the rest of us lame-os who do not risk our lives every day on two-wheeled death traps. For me, just knowing that bikers tool around our nation’s curvy back roads, waving at people they have never met—that they find camaraderie, even in this simple way, as a community of sorts… a leather-wearing, thrill-seeking community, but a true fellowship nonetheless!—well, this knowledge gives me hope for the rest of us.

And maybe we’re catching on, just a tiny bit. In my neighborhood, we always wave at each other as we drive past. I don’t know all my neighbors’ names, but I figure the waving is a start. I confess, when I drive through my friends’ neighborhoods, I like to wave at their neighbors, too—pretending I live there, pretending we have a reason to go out of our way to be kind to each other (as if our shared humanity were not reason enough!). And sometimes, when I pull out of my neighborhood onto the roads that take me out to the wider world, I still find myself waving at the other drivers I pass, out of habit—and I bet they think I’m crazy: “Who’s the weird lady in the minivan who keeps grinning and waving at me—holy cow, are those monkeys jumping around that van?” That would be me, your eccentric local writer (and my crazy part-simian children). Blame it on my sensitive, creative nature, if you want. And maybe on my upbringing, me with my Harley-waving-preacher father, and my delightfully idealistic mother.

My mom told me her own waving story so many times in my adolescence that I now have it memorized: When she was 15, she went through a period of insecurity and loneliness, feeling like she didn’t have friends in her high school. Her solution? She decided to march through the hallways, smiling and waving and saying “hi” to everyone she saw. Within days, Mom wasn’t lonely anymore… her confidence and friendliness had won her many new acquaintances. (And okay, let’s be honest, Mom, you were drop-dead gorgeous, that didn’t hurt your cause, either!)

All this has made me wonder… what would the world be like if we all waved at everyone we met—if we made eye contact and acknowledged, even in a small way, every person’s presence and innate worth? If we focused on making basic face-to-face connections, instead of digital ones? Would this world, jammed with all its 7 billion inhabitants, be a kinder, more intimate place to live? I like to think so.

So if you catch me, in or out of my minivan, waving at random people, grinning like an idiot—well, blame it a little on my parents and a lot on the bikers. We’re making the world a better place, one wave at a time.

by Elizabeth Laing Thompson

The joy is in the trying, the hoping, the crying;
The joy is in the wanting, the wishing, the hunting;
The joy is in the dreaming, the planning, the scheming;
The joy is in the yearning, the aching, the burning;
The joy is in the striving, the longing, the sighing;

The joy is in the training, the sweating, the straining;
The joy is in the chasing, the sprinting, the racing;
The joy is in the drafting, the building, the crafting;
The joy is in the writing, the plotting, revising;
The joy is in the baiting, the watching, the waiting;

The joy is in the noble-questing, never-resting, go-out-westing;
The joy is in the white-whale-chasing, windmill-killing, true-love-saving;
The joy is in the risk-taking, heart-breaking, hope-waking;
The joy is in the nerve-wracking, hand-wringing, head-scratching;
The joy is in the star-seeking, moon-shooting, far-reaching;

The joy is in the goal-setting, soul-stretching,
almost-getting—

‘Cause when at last we grasp
that wished-for, longed-for, long-sought prize,
we pause, and smile, and sigh—
and look around, a wistful eager gleam sparking in our eyes,
scanning the horizon for the next
mountain to scale, dragon to slay, heart to capture—
and with eyes twinkling, heart thrilling, joy swelling,
we turn and clap our hands and say,
“What’s next?”

The joy is in the trying, the hoping, the crying…

As a word lover, I take delight in rolling words around in my brain and off my tongue, the way they feel coming together, the way the consonants and vowels and diphthongs (think “ai” and “ei” and “oi”) all work together to make sounds, almost like music. And as a mother of three small, lisping children, I love watching them get tongue-tied as they learn new words and sounds. My two-year-old’s favorite word this week is “delicious.” Suddenly everything she eats is “dewishous.” My four- and five-year-old are obsessed with Fozzie Bear’s favorite saying: “Wacka wacka wacka”—it’s always good for a laugh at our house.

But some words are just fun to say, no matter how old you are… Here are some of my favorites, in the most random order possible, so as not to hurt any of the words’ feelings:

squish
squash
quash
squander
squiggle
sasquatch
(As you can see, any word with “sh” or “squ” in it is pretty much a guaranteed winner.)
wiggle
wriggle
bumble bee
tumbleweed
scrumptious
delectable
smorgasbord (I credit my love for this word to Ben Stiller, and a random favorite movie line, from “Meet the Parents”: “O dear God… we thank you sweet sweet Lord of hosts for this smorgasbord you have so aptly lain at our table this day, and each day… by day. Day by day… by day.”)
ginormous (Yep, it’s made the dictionary now.)
onomatopoeia
serendipitous
felicity
abominable (As in, the Abominable Snowman. Or, if you are my sister Alexandra, you might call him the Abdominal Snowman. No comment.)
ogle
Yiddish (Also, all Yiddish words are fun to say, now that I think about it.)
nebulous
lugubrious
narcissistic
Weeki Wachi (I swear, it’s a real place: Weeki Wachi Springs, in Florida. Google it. Apparently, they have mermaids there. Actually, I could go on and on about all the fun Native American names that pop up on the US map, especially in Florida and Georgia… Hiawassee, Okahumpka, Saskatchewan… the list is endless. But since these aren’t technically English words, we’ll move on. Sadly.)
reptilian
Volkswagen (Okay, so this one isn’t English either, but… well, whatever. My list, my rules.)
All the omni-words are fun:
omnivorous
omnipresent
omniscient
amnesiac
hypochondriac
ophthalmologist (Who knew it was spelled like this, right?!)
amalgam
ubiquitous
wallop
dollop
Yoo-hoo (The Southern variant, Yee-haw, is an instant pick-me-up. Try it. You’ll like it.)
y’all (Another beautiful Southern word, which I like because of its gender neutrality. It frees us from the ever-present Northern dilemma of calling everyone “you guys.” Tsk tsk.)
voyeur
Bunko
hunker
hanker (“I hanker for a hunk of cheese”… anybody else remember that song?)
handkerchief
scintilla
flicker
firefly
quaint
decaf grande nonfat no-whip mocha (That would be my drink at Starbucks. Just saying it makes me happy.)
sasparilla
cinnamon
sassafrass
spaghetti (I am happy to report that my children do, in fact, call it “bisketti.”)
gnocchi (How you get “nyo-kee” out of gnocchi is a mystery to me, but it is infinitely entertaining.)
snot, booger, and related bodily-function-type words, which are fun to say for gross reasons. What can I say? I think a 12-year-old boy lives inside me somewhere. (Although snot and booger do have a certain ring to them.)
shish kebab
shenanza* (*Not a real word. Unless you are my brother David, trying to invent a word that means both extravaganza and shindig, while speaking in front of hundreds of people.)
chuggle* (*Also not a real word. Unless you are my Dad, trying to say chug and jiggle or juggle, or something along those lines.)
Grandolorious! Fantabulous!* (*Also not real words. Unless you are Alexis Weymouth, Crystal Waters’ spunky best friend, who likes to combine adjectives to make them more glamorous.)
The Thirteenth Summer is the best book ever. (Wait, did I actually just write that? That’s a sentence, not a word. Silly me.)

Feel free to add some of your favorite words… this list could go on and on and on… and that in itself is a testament to the beauty of words.

Everything I need to know about life, I learned from America’s Funniest Home Videos:

1. If you hold a baby up to your face, they will vomit in your mouth.
2. If you hold a naked baby’s hind parts anywhere near your face… heaven help you.
3. If you dance on a table, it will collapse.
4. Little boys always have to pee-pee really, really bad during school musicals.
5. Do not let Grandma blow out her birthday candles. Her dentures will escape.
6. The following things do not mix well together:
~Brides and swimming pools
~Children, baseball bats, and their fathers’—um—delicate areas
~Children, piñatas, and (see above)
~Large people and porch swings
~Ring bearers, flower girls, and dance floors
~Teenage boys and wheeled objects of any kind (This includes, but is not limited to: bikes, skateboards, tractors, pickup trucks, and VW vans from 1978)
~Teenage boys, wheeled objects, and ramps of any kind
~Twenty-something men, video cameras, and weightlifting (Translation: Twenty-something men who are FILMING THEMSELVES working out—usually with no shirt on—which is just wrong, on so many levels.)
~Middle-aged men and rope swings
~Any-aged men and poopy diapers
~Old men and snow
7. If someone with a video camera gives you a lottery ticket, and you win: It is a trick. You didn’t win the lottery. Your “friend” is just mean.
8. 31 burps in 30 seconds is always awesome.
9. Do not sneeze into a bowl of flour.
10. Women in the 80s and 90s all wore floral dresses with bibs, and had horrible hair. Truly. It’s like a whole generation stuck their fingers in electric sockets.
11. A shocking number of people eat their boogers.
12. Do not get a pet ferret.
13. If you insist on getting a pet ferret, do not hold said ferret up to your face. Unless you were planning on getting a nose job anyway.
14. Come to think of it, do not hold anything up to your face anywhere near a video camera (see #1, #2, #12, and #13). You’re just asking to be on America’s Funniest Home Videos.

The Thirteenth Summer now has its own Facebook page, in case you hadn’t heard: www.facebook.com/thirteenthsummer.

I’m posting lots of fun stuff about the book, including some deleted scenes from early manuscripts, inside info on the characters, and updates about the book’s Quest to Become a Movie (It’s been optioned by Hollywood producers, who are already shopping it around to film studios!). If you like the book (or if you just like me!) please also “like” the page on Facebook, and share it with your friends. The more of a following the book has, the better its chances of becoming a movie! It also helps, when you read these posts, if you click the “like” button, so it posts to Facebook more frequently. Okay, commercial over. Back to blogging. THANK YOU!

Today I posted this scene in a note on the new Facebook page, and it felt kind of bloggish, so I thought I’d share it here, too, just for kicks.

One of my favorite things about writing The Thirteenth Summer was revisiting some of the cities I’ve lived in. Being a preacher’s kid, I moved up and down the East Coast throughout my childhood. I wanted to recapture, through Crystal’s eyes, some of the culture shocks I experienced.

When I was 10, my family moved from Atlanta to Boston. First let me say that, now that I live in Georgia again, fall in the South has been forever ruined for me by glorious memories of Boston’s Real Fall Weather… the trees a patchwork quilt of color; walking down the road to Wilson’s Farm to buy pumpkins and squash and caramel apples; aahhh, it was spectacular… But there were some bizarre moments, too. Like the first time I sat in my fifth grade class and said the word “y’all,” the WHOLE CLASS—I kid you not—turned around and stared at me like I had an alien popping out of my chest. For lunch, the cafeteria served peanut butter and fluff sandwiches. And here I thought fluff was something you did to your hair when you wanted a boy to look at you! (The sandwiches are divinely gooey, and an orthodontic nightmare, by the way.) If I wanted to buy a milkshake in Boston, people would ask me if I wanted a frappe instead. What the heck was a frappe? I’m still not exactly sure. And then there were the jimmies…

In case you didn’t catch it, that was my uber-smooth segue into a fun deleted scene from an early draft of the book.
This is Luke and Crystal in chapter 7, Coffee, Clothes and Cute Company, sight-seeing in Harvard Square with bodyguard Big Al—I’ll never forget my own first visit there. So I say again (dramatic pause here):

And then there were the jimmies…

Luke and Crystal bought cones at a small ice cream shop, and as the large grizzled man behind the counter scooped their cones, he grunted, “You want jimmies on those cones?”

“Excuse me?” Crystal said.

“Jimmies,” he repeated, looking at her as if she was two years old.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand, who’s Jimmy?”

The man snorted and yelled over his shoulder, “Hey Bert, this little girl wants to know who Jimmy is!”

Crystal felt her face redden as she heard a hoot of laughter from the back of the store—apparently Bert was amused.

Luke stepped up beside her. “Hey, now, is that any way to treat a lady visiting Boston for the first time?” Crystal felt her face burn even more. No boy had ever defended her honor before.

The man glared at Luke, leaning over the counter as if to show off his superior size. “Hmmmph. So, jimmies or no jimmies?”

“We’d love jimmies, thank you.” Luke leaned down to Crystal (he was at least a foot taller than she was) and whispered, “I have no idea what they are, either, but we’ll try them, okay?”

She nodded, sure her face was still the color of a tomato.

It turned out that “jimmies” were just sprinkles, and Crystal was disappointed when Luke handed a cone to her. She’d been picturing something more exotic.

“Sorry about the rudeness, no Southern hospitality here,” Luke said between licks.

“Oh, hey, no big deal. And—um—thanks for, you know, sticking up for me.”

“No prob. But now you owe me one.”

Bring on the sweatshirts, I’m sooooo ready for fall! We got a huge downpour on Saturday morning, and this poem is what came out of it in my brain… The formatting is rather atrocious (darn the built-in formatting features I can’t seem to get around!), but… well, here you go.

After the Rain

A whisper, really,
so faint it might be a dream;
not so much a presence
as an absence—
of water in the air.

First a heavy, soaking rain,
like a long, slow drink of iced tea
with a sprig of mint
on a creaky front porch swing—
feet-up relief
after a long, smoldering summer,
burning, suffocating,
smoking, choking in the
never-ending ash and ember.

But now at last the rain has come,
and lingered—
not a quick summer shower
that only teases
and makes it worse:

sputtering,

rumbling,

stomping around

pretending

for five minutes,

just long enough to turn the chalky powdery dirt
into brick-red, carpet-staining glue;

and turn people into steamed asparagus
walking around,
overcooked and limp,
wilting—

no.

At last,
a real,
long,
lazy-morning,
back-to-bed
late-summer drenching
that wrings all the water from the sky,
hour after happy hour.

And when the dripping’s done,
dry air remains—
not cool,
not even close to cool,
but different somehow—
breezy and light,
fresh and clean:

a kiss of fall,
a nip,
a hint,
a whisper—

of joy
and pumpkins
and laughing children
and trees ablaze
and smoking leaves
and bonfires and s’mores
and sweatshirts and jeans
and turkey
and Christmas

all

just

around

the bend.

Bubble-Wrapped Dreams

(If you like subtitles, this one actually has one: Christmas in July. In case anyone’s wondering. Which you probably aren’t.)

I still get a thrill every time I check the mail, just like I did when I was a little girl. I walk down my long driveway to our black mailbox, standing guard over the cul-de-sac; I force open the rusty black hinges (they stick just a bit, we never remember to oil them); and in that moment, my breath catches, just for a heartbeat; my imagination swirls.

What might rest inside, waiting for me? I can hear the cynics scoffing, “Bills. It’s all bills!”—and usually it is—but every so often, there’s that “just-because” letter from Karen, scribbled in the careless scrawl that I know as well as my own; or a card from Gam, who never forgets a birthday; or free books for my kids from Dolly Parton’s generous literacy program; or that $8 rebate check I forgot I’d sent off for three months ago (Score! Now I get two free trips to Starbucks this week!); or the bowtie my son will wear as a ring-bearer in Miss Mickey’s wedding; or even a rejection letter . . . disappointing as it is to get one, it means I’m still writing, still chasing the dream, still sending my work out into the world.

In this impersonal era of digital everything—you send an email, it zings into cyberspace, crosses the country, the ocean, or even the planet, never touching ground before reaching its destination almost instantaneously (and there is a mind-boggling magic in that, too)—mail is still intensely personal, physical, grounded in tangible reality. My friend touches something . . . puts it in an envelope or box, entrusts it to her mailman, and a few days and many miles later, I open that same envelope . . . hold what she held; touch paper she touched; read her own handwriting—those marks of the pen that, if you know how to analyze them, are said to reveal insights into our subconscious psyche. When I was a kid, I used to literally kiss the envelope, then draw a pair of lips and write, “S.W.A.K.—Sealed With a Kiss,” then mail my kisses to my friend Gayle, all the way from Miami to Boston. Oh, how jealous I felt of that envelope, which would soon be sitting inside my best friend’s house, where I wanted to be. All that way—1,253 miles—for the cost of a single stamp!

Even when we order something online, some worker, an actual person named Maria—or maybe John, whose newborn son kept him up all last night; or Wilhelmina, who would rather be called Sarah; or Steve, who is drumming up the courage to talk to that red-head on his lunch break—packs the box, fills it with bubble wrap, seals it shut . . . and when I open it a few days later, undoing their handiwork, my children squeal with delight as they take turns popping the bubble wrap. Thirty minutes of free entertainment and childcare, courtesy of the Amazon people.

Ah, that glorious sound, the bizarre, inexpressible joy of squishing those tiny air pockets, feeling the air bulge between your fingertips just before the seal bursts, and hearing the crackly little pip . . . pip-pop . . . pop-pop-puhpuh-pop-crrrack. That sound—it never gets old. The day I stop enjoying bubble-wrap popping is the day my soul has died and life is no longer worth living.

Today I mailed a copy of The Thirteenth Summer to someone whose stamp of approval could make a significant difference in my writing career. I folded up my handwritten note, tucked my business card and press release inside the book—arranged them just so—and sealed it all inside a padded envelope, my heart thumping just a little faster.

Fragile.

Handle with care.

As I handed the package to the friendly FedEx lady behind the counter, I almost grabbed her by the shoulders and said, “You’re holding my future in your hands. DON’T LOSE IT!” But, not wanting to freak her out, or get arrested for assault, I just smiled. What power this woman—whose name I may never know—holds! As I walked out of the chilly air-conditioned office, feeling my skin recoil for a moment in the shock of the sweltering Georgia humidity, I thought, “I’m not the only one.” Everyone who comes in here entrusts this woman with part of their family, their work, their life. She is helping to deliver our ambitions, our hopes—our bubble-wrapped dreams—to other people who could change our lives. I wonder if she is philosophical enough to appreciate what her job really means.

It’s July, but in the spirit of Christmas in July, my three-year-old son has already made me write a letter to Santa: “Dear Santa, Please bring me a light-up Buzz Lightyear for Christmas. Love, Blake.”

Blake calls the letter his “ticket”—and that’s pretty much how he thinks it works. You write your letter to Santa, and it’s like a claim ticket, because of course Santa will bring you whatever you ask for. I keep imagining the postal workers’ amused expressions, their surprised chuckles, when they find a letter to Santa in July. What will they do with it? Will somebody bother to write him back?

And while Blake will be miserable, waiting six months for Christmas—an incomprehensible eternity in the life of a three-year-old, one-sixth of his life span thus far!—I somehow find joy in the waiting period that “snail mail” entails. Mailing something off, the agony of awaiting a reply, or a delivery . . . it’s an exquisite torture, an experience that our instant-gratification, overnight-delivery lifestyle is robbing from our children. Remember Ralphie in “A Christmas Story,” racing to the mailbox every day for weeks, wondering if his Little Orphan Annie decoder had arrived? I know exactly how he felt. I still love that feeling: The joy of anticipation. Something to wake up for every morning. Hope.

Mail . . . call me sentimental, but it feels like modern magic to me. And that makes the mailman—or mailwoman, in our case (mail lady? mail mistress? woman who delivers stuff to people?)—a wizard of sorts. Or maybe a fairy godmother or an elf.

Whatever her actual title, I have to remember to give our non-male mail person a good tip this Christmas. After all, she holds my future—and Blake’s Buzz Lightyear—in her hands.