I Miss You When I Blink: Essays(64)
You can always start over.
Sometimes my guests, especially the debut authors who haven’t done much press yet, stumble over their words or forget someone’s name or blurt out a thought they didn’t really mean to share. A look of panic always crosses their face when that happens, but there’s no need to worry, I tell them. I put my hand on theirs and say, It’s fine. We have plenty of time. Try it again, more like you.
Acknowledgments
Thank you —
To Kristyn Keene, for whom the word agent is insufficient, and to Trish Todd and the team at Simon & Schuster, for believing in and cheering for this book before it even was a book. Special thanks also to Cat Shook at ICM and to these folks at Simon & Schuster: the amazing Jessica Roth and Wendy Sheanin, plus the brilliant Kaitlin Olson, Meredith Vilarello, Kelsey Manning, Cherlynne Li, Tara Parsons, Susan Moldow, Polly Watson, and the team at Atria. And a million high fives to Beth Parker, of course.
To friends and colleagues in Nashville, Atlanta, New York, and all over the country—more of you than I could mention here without using up a whole tree’s worth of pages—for giving expert advice, letting me talk your ears off, or generally showing kindness and patience while I worked on this project. (If you think I might mean you, I do.) Extra thanks for the friendship to Brittany Roberts, Susannah Parker, and Laura Balch; to my Davidson gang; and to the Loose Women Book Club, especially Sissy Gardner.
To my writing group—Margaret Renkl, Susannah Felts, Maria Browning, and Carrington Fox. Every other writing group wishes they were as great as you. Thanks also to the very early readers brave enough to sit through a whole draft, including Molly Schulman, Ashton Hickey, Catherine Bock, plus Emmely Duncan and Kelly Kirby-Piovarcy, who read some pretty rough drafts. And to Keltie Peay for emergency proofreading.
To Amy Williams for name-dropping me into a conversation that started another conversation that started another conversation that led to my finally sitting down and writing this thing.
To Carmen Toussaint and Rivendell Writers Colony for space and time.
To the animals who made the human world more tolerable during the writing of this book: Eleanor Roosevelt, Woodstock, Frank, Thaquine, Leonard, Sparky, Emma, Clark, Millie, Biddy, Tillie, Alice, Faye, the ever-evolving cast of shop dogs, parking-lot cats, and internet bats.
To Linda Wei, Matt Emigh, and the whole crew at Nashville Public Television for the line “try it again, more like you,” which I’ll be using forever.
To Roberta Zeff, Rachel Dry, KJ Dell’Antonia, Nadja Spiegelman, Amy Joyce, Towles Kintz, Nora Krug, Ron Charles, and other editors over the years for publishing my essays along the way, including some of the work that would eventually end up in this book.
To independent bookstores everywhere.
To each member of my bookstore family at Parnassus Books. Extra thanks to Karen Hayes, who provided endless support as I attempted to cram bookstore work, writing work, and parent work into the confines of twenty-four-hour days.
To Colin Meloy and the Decemberists for allowing me to borrow their lyrics about a boy band and turn them into an epigraph about womanhood and reinvention.
To my family, especially my parents, for loving me.
To WC and MG, for letting me love you.
To John, the most.
Previously Published
Parts of the following essays, published by these outlets, appear in some form this book: New York Times “Shopping for a Car—and a Teenager’s Future”
“My Adventures in Accountability”
“Sing, O Muse, of the Mall of America”
“Wishing Away the Wish List”
“And Then the Dog Died”
“Telling the Kids: We’re Moving”
Washington Post “Teaching Girls to Save Their Own Lives”
Los Angeles Times “How Prince’s Death Stirs Fans’ Concerns for Their Heroes”
Paris Review “The Case for Seasonal Sentimentality”
Proximity
“Lobsterman”